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Many companies are operating in a global environment. First, there are the fully global or multinational corporations. Second, there are the companies that export or import. Third, a large number of companies face competition from products created in countries where labor and other costs are low, or where there is an abundance of natural resources. Other companies have low-cost production facilities in these same countries. Finally, electronic commerce facilitates global trading by enabling even small companies to buy from or sell to business partners in other countries. Thus, globalization is rapidly increasing. Doing business in a global environment is becoming more and more challenging as the political environment improves and as telecommunications and the Internet open the door to a large number of buyers, sellers, and competitors worldwide. The increased competition forces companies to look for better ways to do global business. Porter and Youngman (1995), for example, propose an approach that fo- cuses on employment policies and government regulations. Similarly, Ghemawat (2001) proposes a framework in which companies are urged to consider cultural, administrative, geographical, and economic dimensions to assess their ability to compete in global markets. Ghemawat calls this a “CAGE distance” framework, an acronym for the four dimensions to be considered by businesses that are selling products outside their local area, especially internationally. A comprehensive framework that connects IT and global business was sug- gested by Ives et al. (1993). According to this global business driver framework, the success of companies doing business in a competitive global environment depends on the alignment of a company’s information system and its global business strat- egy. This connection is demonstrated by Rosenbluth International, whose strategy enables it to compete with local travel agencies in 57 countries, and by Caterpillar Corporation, which employs a business strategy of strong support to dealers and customers worldwide by means of its effective global information system. The suc- cess of multinational firms and companies engaged in global activities, in a highly competitive global market, thus strongly depends on the link between their infor- mation systems and their business strategy. Information managers must be inno- vative in identifying the IT systems that a firm needs in order to be competitive worldwide and must tie them to the strategic business imperatives. The global business driver framework provides a tool for identifying business entities, such as customers, suppliers, projects, and orders, that will benefit most from an integrated global IT management system. The basic idea is to apply IT through a firm’s global business drivers. These are business factors that benefit from global economies of scale or scope and thus add value to a global business strategy. Typical global business drivers are risk reduction, availability of a skilled and/or inexpensive workforce, quality products/services, location of materials, sup- ply and suppliers, location of customers, and a country’s infrastructure. The idea of the global business drivers framework is to look at the drivers in terms of current and future information needs and to focus on worldwide implementation. Advances in Internet availability and electronic commerce are of special in- terest to global traders. First, many of the business drivers can be facilitated by the Internet, which is much cheaper and more accessible than private commu- nication networks. Second, the Internet and e-commerce are answers to several of the analysis questions related to global business drivers. Additional analysis of some global business drivers is available at the book’s Web site.